


Learning Partners

by thesometimeswarrior



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Guilt, Injury Recovery, Post-Canon, Post-Series, Teacher-Student Relationship, aftermath of war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-17 00:32:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11840268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesometimeswarrior/pseuds/thesometimeswarrior
Summary: “At the North Pole, you said something about expecting me to bend in the Southern Style…does that mean that…you know the Southern Style?”He considers for a moment. “I wouldn’t say that Iknowit. I’m theoretically aware of some of the differences; when I was a boy, my teacher would accuse me of bending in the Southern Style if I moved my arms in certain ways—still efficient to move the water, but not aesthetically pleasing to the Northern palate, not what people were used to.”“Oh.” Her voice drips with a palpable disappointment.Pakku and Katara, after the War.





	Learning Partners

**Author's Note:**

> This is intended as something of a sequel to my earlier piece "The Importance of Tradition," which can be found [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11815824), but reading that is definitely not essential to understanding this one.
> 
> AO3 user Zilliannie had wondered how Pakku might react to Hama's story. This is something of a response to that.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

It has been nearly a year now, but Pakku nonetheless winces when Katara bends water onto the scar. 

“Does it still hurt?” she asks, kneeling over him in the hut that he and Kanna share. While a few healers remain in the South Pole from the group that arrived with him from the North, when Katara visits, she is the one who works on his injury—like a peace treaty between the two of them.

“Occasionally,” responds Pakku tersely. “Not as it did.”

When he had first returned from Ba Sing Se, the pain had been excruciating. He hadn’t expected to face the enhanced Fire Nation Army on the day of Sozin’s Comet and come away unscathed, even fighting alongside two master Firebenders. But he had not been prepared for the extent of the deep burn running down his right side and leg, had not been prepared for the fact that, at first, he had hardly been able to walk without assistance and that bending had been next to impossible. It has only been with months of disciplined practice—rising before moonset and standing in the snow for hours each day, retraining his body in all the forms he had mastered as a young man—that he has been able to achieve close to the level of ability that he had before.

( _I’m impressed,_ Kanna had smirked once, crossing her arms as she watched Pakku train. _I wouldn’t have expected a Northerner to have this much grit._

 _Despite the fact that we in the North have had the privilege of not having to use them_ , Pakku had grumbled in response after lifting himself up from yet another fall. _Persistence and grit are not uniquely Southern traits._ )

But there are still days when the burn flares, when walking and moving are difficult.

“I wish you’d been able to start healing it as soon as it happened,” Katara says, not for the first time. “Maybe it wouldn’t have gotten this bad.”

“Yes, well. We both know I never learned to heal.”

“I can teach you if you want.”

“Are you expecting another War?” Pakku asks, raising his eyebrows. “And besides, I am not sure I have the aptitude for it.”

“A great waterbending master once told me that ‘with fierce determination, passion and hard work, you can achieve anything—raw talent alone is not enough.’”

There’s nothing he can say in response to his own words being held up to him as a counterpoint, so he lays quietly as she finishes her work.

After, as Katara helps him to sit up, he says: “In any case, I’m glad _you_ learned healing.”

He doesn’t mean it as a condemnation, or a commentary on gender roles, but she seems to take it that way, says: “It wasn’t that I _didn’t_ want to learn to heal. And, given everything that happened after we left the North Pole…I’m glad I did…It’s just that, I also wanted— _needed_ to learn fighting styles. Both to defend the people important to me, and to keep my culture alive…”

“I know,” Pakku responds sincerely, as he pulls his shirt and pants back on.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“At the North Pole, you said something about expecting me to bend in the Southern Style…does that mean that…you know the Southern Style?”

He considers for a moment. “I wouldn’t say that I _know_ it. I’m theoretically aware of some of the differences; when I was a boy, my teacher would accuse me of bending in the Southern Style if I moved my arms in certain ways—still efficient to move the water, but not aesthetically pleasing to the Northern palate, not what people were used to.”

“Oh.” Her voice drips with a palpable disappointment. “I’d hoped that there would be someone for me to learn it from…but I guess there’s not anyone.” She pauses. “Before the Comet, I met someone, an old woman waterbender from the South, who said she wanted to teach me the Southern Style, and I was so _happy_ —but...what her waterbending was…” Katara shudders in a way that doesn’t escape Pakku’s notice. “She had spent years in a brutal Fire Nation prison, after they had taken her, and…she would…to escape, and after…she was so fueled by hatred that she would—her bending was so _twisted_. And I understand it was because she was _traumatized_ and was living among people whom she considered to be the enemy…but it was still so _wrong_ ; she would bend…” 

His one-time pupil shakes her head in what almost seems to be an unconscious gesture, sighs sadly, before continuing. “Well, the point is, that I’m worried that that’s all that’s left of our Style…something twisted, and traumatized, and…and _wrong_. And of course I’m so grateful to know the Northern Style, but, I wanted to keep _mine_ alive too. Eventually to teach it to new waterbenders down here...But I guess it’s gone.”

Now Pakku sighs. It seems every day he lives down here, he learns of another way that the War has decimated this Tribe. He knew of all the casualties, of the abduction and murders of the literal waterbenders, but he had not considered until this moment what that must have done to the remains of the bending style itself by the end. Waterbending can be weaponized, can be dangerous when it needs to be, but it is first and foremost an art, a sacred tradition, something _beautiful_. To hear of it distorted in the way that Katara describes breaks his heart. 

And yet, all hope is not lost. “I wouldn’t say that it’s gone,” he says after a moment, referring again to Southern Style. “If I’m not mistaken, there are several Southern waterbending scrolls in the Northern Water Tribe archives. I will write to the North and request that they send them to me.” He pauses. “It is true that I do not know the Style well enough to train you, but,” he smiles. “I would be honored to try to learn it with you, one master of the Northern Style to another.”

She looks at him, and smiles wider than he has seen her do since the end of the War. 

He was silent and ignorant as his Sister Tribe was destroyed, little by little, until it and all of its traditions were mere skeletons of what they had been. But he is here now. He is a waterbending master—this is how he helps rebuild.

And it is true, he thinks, that scrolls are no substitute for a real teacher, but in the absence of that, for Katara, a learning partner will suffice nicely.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I know that _technically_ this might not be compatible with the _North and South_ comics, because I think the implication of those comics is that that is the first time Katara is returning to the South Pole. But I think that in all but that--and the fact that the comics hadn't mentioned Pakku having any sort of serious injury--this is canon compliant.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoyed! I love comments!


End file.
